small memory machine, large reserved memory

small memory machine, large reserved memory

[Tim Connors]

In light of the recent discussions about config_tiny, etc, I decided to
install 2.4.19 on my old 8MB 486, to see whether it performed any better
than my previous attempts with 2.2.* and 2.4.*

The strange thing is, the memory init line at bootup (eg Memory:
255296k/261996k available (1584k kernel code, 5972k reserved, 1353k data
, 108k init, 0k highmem)) says that only about 5 or 6MB are availabel,
with a whopping 2.x MB reserved. I have done a web search, and the only
answer I have come up with is that the top 384kb of the 1MB lower
portion of RAM should be here, but what else could be eating up all my
RAM?

There is nothgin suspicious in the BIOS - all BIOS and video caching is
turned off. The machine only (natually) has ISA slots in it, most are
empty. What else could possibly be wrong?

Is there something I can hack in the kernel to get it to use that, or can
anyone give me pointers as to what else I can change? I would really love
to regain that 2MB - its a pain when the shell gets swapped out after
doing an `ls` :)

-- 
TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/

            Computer screens simply ooze buckets of yang.
    To balance this, place some women around the corners of the room.
                                        -- Kaz Cooke, Dumb Feng Shui

Re: small memory machine, large reserved memory

[William Lee Irwin III]

On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 01:10:36PM +1100, Tim Connors wrote:
> In light of the recent discussions about config_tiny, etc, I decided to
> install 2.4.19 on my old 8MB 486, to see whether it performed any better
> than my previous attempts with 2.2.* and 2.4.*
> The strange thing is, the memory init line at bootup (eg Memory:
> 255296k/261996k available (1584k kernel code, 5972k reserved, 1353k data
> , 108k init, 0k highmem)) says that only about 5 or 6MB are availabel,
> with a whopping 2.x MB reserved. I have done a web search, and the only
> answer I have come up with is that the top 384kb of the 1MB lower
> portion of RAM should be here, but what else could be eating up all my
> RAM?
> There is nothgin suspicious in the BIOS - all BIOS and video caching is
> turned off. The machine only (natually) has ISA slots in it, most are
> empty. What else could possibly be wrong?
> Is there something I can hack in the kernel to get it to use that, or can
> anyone give me pointers as to what else I can change? I would really love
> to regain that 2MB - its a pain when the shell gets swapped out after
> doing an `ls` :)

How does 2.5.44 (or 2.5.x-bk) do?


Bill

Re: small memory machine, large reserved memory

[Tim Connors]

On Sun, 3 Nov 2002, William Lee Irwin III wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 01:10:36PM +1100, Tim Connors wrote:
> > In light of the recent discussions about config_tiny, etc, I decided to
> > install 2.4.19 on my old 8MB 486, to see whether it performed any better
> > than my previous attempts with 2.2.* and 2.4.*
> > The strange thing is, the memory init line at bootup (eg Memory:
> > 255296k/261996k available (1584k kernel code, 5972k reserved, 1353k data
> > , 108k init, 0k highmem)) says that only about 5 or 6MB are availabel,
> > with a whopping 2.x MB reserved. I have done a web search, and the only
> > answer I have come up with is that the top 384kb of the 1MB lower
> > portion of RAM should be here, but what else could be eating up all my
> > RAM?
> > There is nothgin suspicious in the BIOS - all BIOS and video caching is
> > turned off. The machine only (natually) has ISA slots in it, most are
> > empty. What else could possibly be wrong?
> > Is there something I can hack in the kernel to get it to use that, or can
> > anyone give me pointers as to what else I can change? I would really love
> > to regain that 2MB - its a pain when the shell gets swapped out after
> > doing an `ls` :)
>
> How does 2.5.44 (or 2.5.x-bk) do?

2.5.45 - still no go.

I will post the logs when I get the computer electrically connected to
anything....

-- 
TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/

Black holes are where God divided by zero.  -- Steven Wright

Re: small memory machine, large reserved memory

[Tim Connors]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: TEXT/PLAIN, Size: 1586 bytes --]

On Sun, 3 Nov 2002, William Lee Irwin III wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 01:10:36PM +1100, Tim Connors wrote:
> > In light of the recent discussions about config_tiny, etc, I decided to
> > install 2.4.19 on my old 8MB 486, to see whether it performed any better
> > than my previous attempts with 2.2.* and 2.4.*
> > The strange thing is, the memory init line at bootup (eg Memory:
> > 255296k/261996k available (1584k kernel code, 5972k reserved, 1353k data
> > , 108k init, 0k highmem)) says that only about 5 or 6MB are availabel,
> > with a whopping 2.x MB reserved. I have done a web search, and the only
> > answer I have come up with is that the top 384kb of the 1MB lower
> > portion of RAM should be here, but what else could be eating up all my
> > RAM?
> > There is nothgin suspicious in the BIOS - all BIOS and video caching is
> > turned off. The machine only (natually) has ISA slots in it, most are
> > empty. What else could possibly be wrong?
> > Is there something I can hack in the kernel to get it to use that, or can
> > anyone give me pointers as to what else I can change? I would really love
> > to regain that 2MB - its a pain when the shell gets swapped out after
> > doing an `ls` :)
>
> How does 2.5.44 (or 2.5.x-bk) do?

Okie dokie. Finally booted it and remembered to record the dmesg.

Is attached.

So any idea's on who is stealing my 2 Megs RAM? BIOS's fault?


-- 
TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/

                  -o)
                  /\\    The penguins are coming...
                 _\_v       the penguins are coming...

[-- Attachment #2: Type: TEXT/plain, Size: 4523 bytes --]

Linux version 2.5.45 (root@scuzzie) (gcc version 2.95.4 20011002 (Debian prerelease)) #8 Tue Nov 5 23:04:31 EST 2002
Video mode to be used for restore is f01
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
 BIOS-88: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
 BIOS-88: 0000000000100000 - 0000000000800000 (usable)
8MB LOWMEM available.
On node 0 totalpages: 2048
  DMA zone: 2048 pages, LIFO batch:1
  Normal zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1
  HighMem zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1
Building zonelist for node : 0
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=linux2545 ro root=306
Initializing CPU#0
Console: colour VGA+ 80x50
Calibrating delay loop... 15.84 BogoMIPS
Memory: 4952k/8192k available (1452k kernel code, 2828k reserved, 861k data, 92k init, 0k highmem)
Checking if this processor honours the WP bit even in supervisor mode... Ok.
Security Scaffold v1.0.0 initialized
Dentry cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 1, 8192 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
CPU: Before vendor init, caps: 00000000 00000000 00000000, vendor = 255
CPU: After vendor init, caps: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU:     After generic, caps: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU:             Common caps: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: 486
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
mtrr: v2.0 (20020519)
Linux Plug and Play Support v0.9 (c) Adam Belay
Registering system device cpu0
adding '' to cpu class interfaces
BIO: pool of 256 setup, 14Kb (56 bytes/bio)
biovec pool[0]:   1 bvecs:   4 entries (12 bytes)
biovec pool[1]:   4 bvecs:   2 entries (48 bytes)
biovec pool[2]:  16 bvecs:   1 entries (192 bytes)
biovec pool[3]:  64 bvecs:   0 entries (768 bytes)
biovec pool[4]: 128 bvecs:   0 entries (1536 bytes)
biovec pool[5]: 256 bvecs:   0 entries (3072 bytes)
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: Card 'Intel PRO/10+ or compatible adapter'
isapnp: 1 Plug & Play card detected total
Registering system device pic0
Registering system device rtc0
apm: BIOS not found.
slab: reap timer started for cpu 0
Starting kswapd
aio_setup: sizeof(struct page) = 40
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
Installing knfsd (copyright (C) 1996 okir@monad.swb.de).
Capability LSM initialized
Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ IRQ sharing disabled
ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16450
ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16450
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
[c03be030] eventpoll: driver installed.
Generic RTC Driver v1.06
block request queues:
 16 requests per read queue
 16 requests per write queue
 2 requests per batch
 enter congestion at 3
 exit congestion at 5
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M, fd1 is 1.2M
FDC 0 is an 8272A
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
ide: Assuming 50MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
hda: Conner Peripherals 2113MB - CFA2161A, ATA DISK drive
hdb: Pioneer CD-ROM ATAPIModel DR-UA124X 010, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
hda: task_no_data_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: task_no_data_intr: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
hda: 4127760 sectors (2113 MB), CHS=4095/16/63
 hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 >
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:40, sector 0
hdb: ATAPI 4X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:40, sector 0
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
register interface 'mouse' with class 'input
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
input: PC Speaker
input: AT Set 2 keyboard on isa0060/serio0
serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 512 bind 512)
ip_conntrack version 2.1 (64 buckets, 512 max) - 296 bytes per conntrack
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 92k freed
spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7.
Adding 65984k swap on /dev/hda5.  Priority:-1 extents:1
ne.c:v1.10 9/23/94 Donald Becker (becker@scyld.com)
Last modified Nov 1, 2000 by Paul Gortmaker
NE*000 ethercard probe at 0x320: 00 40 33 25 0a 38
eth0: NE2000 found at 0x320, using IRQ 12.